Website Link: www.Campus2Canton.com
Campus 2 Canton is a content website focusing on articles, interactive tools, E-Commerce sales, and community engagement.
I initially met with the team at Campus 2 Canton at the 2021 Fantasy Football Expo. This team of tight-knit founders was very welcoming and engaging during our initial visit. I was first hired on for periodic web changes to their previous site, before deciding on a complete rebuild. This rebuild started in January 2022 and finished in March 2022, where it was launched with great reception from their audience.
The goal of the redesign was to create something professional looking that was well organized and easy to navigate. A secondary goal was to increase conversions to their membership and drive higher revenue sales with a custom sales funnel.
It was important to the team to create an easy to use responsive view for mobile. The client elected for a templated WordPress theme with the goal of finding one that could be customized for elements that they wanted, like article sharing tools, a button feature on the front page with quick navigation to important pages, and a pop-out side menu that could also be used on desktop.
Because mobile users accounted for more than 50% of the website’s traffic, it was important to the client to ensure a pleasant user experience in responsive view.
In desktop view, you can see that the hamburger button on the logo side of the nav bar activates the pop out menu which includes a login widget, the cart, navigation menu, links to Youtube, and their podcast episodes. A simple click of the “X” in the upper right hand corner of the pop-out menu clears the screen to the default view.
The Icon navigation below the header is a custom built and inserted widget that transforms via media styles when in responsive view. Utilizing a feature post widget short-code and CSS, these blocks are linked to pages with the described information for quick access to the most important information users would be coming to the site for. Icons were custom created in illustrator based on inspiration provided by the client according to the aesthetic they were most interested in.
Below the Icon navigation is a featured article section on the front page that is comprised of the most recent articles in a waterfall layout. New articles are highlighted in the center and then, as more articles are published, they fall to the edges before settling into an archive list in a section below.
The Client chose a pre-made theme that was utilized to create very beautiful content pages and layouts for their articles and displaying their category pages for easy navigation through tons of content like a news site or magazine site.
Their previous site had little options for article meta data display and share button display, but this feature had a very well done mini-sidebar which follows the user as they scroll the page.
The membership platform was created through a mix of plugins that integrated together to create a complex system for maintaining and selling memberships. The base membership plugin being Paid Membership Pro, which offered 250+ additional add-on features to customize for their specific use.
From Discord Integration to Pro-rated upgrade, PMPro allowed a ton of flexibility in creating the sales flow for the sites membership. The main sales arm of the site is WooCommerce, which integrates with PMPro to initiate subscriptions as part of products. This opens up new options for sales and design of product pages and sales pages, and allows integration into funnel systems.
The “Become A Member” page utilizes simple comparison tables that are easily changed through a tab function for “Monthly” and “Yearly” subscriptions, giving the user a simple experience when deciding the terms and specifics of their intended subscription for the site.
Once chosen, the link of their subscription launches them into a custom sales funnel that is utilized through CartFlows Pro plugin.
CartFlows Pro, the sales funnel plugin, is an integration that creates a professional looking checkout page which gives more control over Upsells and Downsells to the potential customer.
The customer goes through a sales journey from the point they click the link for the subscription they want on “Become A Member.” They are initially brought to a product page that displays information about the product they purchased. This page is customizable to include any text or media needed to help convert the sale. Once satisfied, the customer chooses to purchase.
The check out page has options for the Client to entice the customer to add to their purchase or substitute their purchase with a higher value item. This potentially increases the value of the conversion. Once the checkout process has been completed, the customer is then shown either one or two additional pages to make further decisions about their purchase.
At this point, the initial sale has been completed and the customer goes into an Upsell/Downsell Journey. They are first given a landing page with information about how they could get more with a higher value subscription, with an option to accept or deny this offer. If the offer is denied, the customer is given a second landing page with information on a mid value subscription above their current chosen subscription.
If that is denied, they then see a thank you page for their purchase. If either of these Upsell or Downsell offers are accepted, the accepted subscription is then added to their order and the prior purchased subscription is removed.
This flow system opens up incredible opportunities for the Client to control the customer journey and potentially offer increased incentives and products along the way to raise the average value of their individual sales.
Utilizing the WordPress back-end system, the Client has an easy to understand dashboard that gives them full access to features on the site that also displays sales figures and traffic patterns that are verified by two independent systems.
WordPress makes up nearly 40% of the current internet and is one of the leading open source CMSs that can be utilized for any kind of website. This system is built on PHP and allows for automated jobs and integrations that a normal HTML5 site would not be able to do without major investment into development.
This dashboard allows for integration with the email marketing website MailChimp, which integrates with the WooCommerce plugin to allow for triggers to be created and emails to be imported for marketing through the platform.
This integration completes the customer’s journey after their subscription has been purchased on the Campus2Canton website. Using the WooCommerce trigger of a purchase, subscribers are sorted into segments in the marketing funnels and finish their journey with a welcome email crafted to guide users on how to use the site and their subscription to make the most of their purchase.
This ensures a positive experience from the customer and repeat sales for the Client. Once the customer’s email is in the marketing funnel, it allows the Client further contact with the customer at future dates to share information or additional value.
The subscription for this client included many interactive tools built using the code language R, which produces Shiny Apps. These apps do not pair well with PHP code since they are not created with an HTML based language.
To integrate these apps, I had to make use of an iFrame tool. Utilizing the iFrame, creating a window large enough to encompass the full size of any of these apps, and utilizing custom CSS coding, the integration looks seamless.
While the website is built from a templated WordPress theme, much of the site is custom made through hardcoded HTML and layered with custom CSS to give a final product that looks vastly different than the initial template.